(Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm) the effects of pre writing activities on the grade 11 students motivation in writing at ham rong high school

THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL ***** INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE THE EFFECTS OF PRE – WRITING ACTIVITIES ON THE GRADE 11 STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN WRITING AT HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL Author: Trương Thi Thanh Hà Position: Teacher Research field: English THANH HOA 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim of the study 1.3 Scope and objectives of the study 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Significance of the study CONTENTS 2.1 Theoretical background 2.2 The reality of the study PAGES 1 1 3 3.1 Conclusion 4 10 11 18 18 3.2 Limitations of the study 18 3.3 Suggestions for further research 18 2.2.1 Background of the study 2.2.2 Brief description of the lesson 2.2.3 Finding cause of the problem 2.2.4 Try – out stage 2.2.5 Brief description of the lesson CONCLUSION REFERENCES 19 INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE Nowadays English has become an international language because it is widely used in many parts of the world In the tendency of integration of the global economy, English is one of the effective communicative tools for everybody The role of English is considered to be very important in the fields of economics, politics, science, culture and education Especially, Vietnam’s official membership of WTO opened a new door for integrating into the world economy, and more and more people want to learn English for communicating with foreign partners, tourism, study tours, etc Thanks to the innovation of ways in teaching English, English lessons are taught with four skills (speaking, reading, listening, writing) in one unit Moreover, there exists three stages – Pre - while – post - teaching in one lesson This really helps students improve their skills beside the grammar exercises to pass the exams Writing is more than a means to create a document; it can be a method to discover topics and explore ideas Pre-writing refers to practice or experimental writing—writing that helps you get started and measure what you know, identify new ideas, and indicate areas requiring further research It is a way of putting critical thinking into action Pre-writing can help sharpen the skills of observation and evaluation Like an artist making quick sketches before beginning a mural, students can test ideas, explore a range of topics, list ideas, and get a feel for their subject Prewriting can help them save time by quickly determining which ideas are worth developing When teaching writing skill to the 11th students at Ham Rong High School the author found out that pre – writing stages are very important in teaching writing and it also has significant effects on the students’ writing performance If students not prepare well enough they can not write well, they can not even write anything in their notebooks The author of this research decided to carry out a research work in : “The effects of pre – writing activities on the grade 11 students’ motivation in writing at Ham Rong High School” Based on the results of this action research, some changes and improvements could be applied in the author’s lessons, and some appropriate strategies needed to be designed with the hope that students will work more effectively in a writing lesson Hopefully that the results of this study would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyone who is interested in this study 1.2 Aim of study The specific aims of the study are as follows: - Clarifying the nature of writing in accordance with some important points in teaching this skill - Investigating the present situation of teaching and learning writing of the 11 th form students to find out advantages as well as problems facing both teachers and students in writing lessons 1.3 Scope and objectives of the study The study will focus on improving the writing skill for 11th students at Ham Rong High School and how pre – writing activities affect the student’ writing performances in writing lessons.This study was carried out in two English classes with 104 11th grade students at Ham Rong High School in Thanh Hoa province 1.4 METHODS OF THE STUDY The study is basically a qualitative research, which employs the following methods: 1 Data is collected by means of three sets of questionnaires, one on the teachers and the others on the students in pre – improvement stage and post – improvement one The questions are of the three – kinds: close – ended questions, open – ended questions and scaling Other sources of data come from writing tasks from the textbooks The analysis of the data hopefully will bring about reliable findings useful for the teaching of writing to non – major students at Nguyen Binh Khiem High School, Hanoi 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY Writing, one of the two productive skills, has always a significant position in language teaching Nevertheless, how to teach and learn writing effectively often poses great problems to both teachers and students For the teachers of English at high school, writing is considered a difficult skill to teach Some of them even ignore teaching writing skill and focus only on grammar excercises for the exams However, nothing is difficult if we, the teachers make decision to make it easier Hopefully , with a range of suggestions of how to make pre – writing activities effectively in writing lessons introduced in this research, it will be more motivating for the teachers to teach and make progress in teaching writing.Therefore, their students will be interested in writing lessons 2 CONTENTS 2.1 Theoretical Background * What is writing? In teaching a language, writing is considered one of the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) that a learner is expected to master Writing is the process in which the writer expresses his thoughts or ideas in the form of handwriting “Writing is communicating Good writing gets your ideas out of your head and into the reader’s head without losing or distorting those ideas” (Leki, 1976) To understand thoroughly the nature of writing, some more academic definitions of writing should be studied According to “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (1989), writing is to “make letters or other symbols on a surface (usually paper), especially with a pen or pencil” Writing, in Davies’s point of view, involved two kinds of skills The first ones were low – level skills such as handwriting or typing, spelling, constructing grammatical sentences, organizing and sequencing, structuring, drafting, and editing Byrne (1988) gave a long and complex definition which might be summarized as follows: writing is the act of forming graphic symbols (letters or combinations of letters) which were arranged to form sentences, and we produced a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain way, on a flat surface of some kind In conclusion, Byrne’s definition can be considered one of the most complete definitions of writing because it covers all of the features of writing given by three above– mentioned authors * Why teach writing? When we learn a second or a foreign language, we learn to communicate with other people: to understand them, talk to them An integral part of participating fully in a new culture setting is learning how to communicate when the other person is not right there in front of us, listening to our words and looking at our gestures and facial expressions Visitors to another country will often have to leave a note for the mailman, fill out a customs declaration form, give written instructions, or write a thank – you letter Raims (1983,p3) thinks there is “….an additional and very important reason: writing helps our students learn.” She shows three ways in which students can learn through writing: - Firstly, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students - Secondy, when our students write, they also have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond that they have just learned to say, to take risks - Thirdly, when they write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language, the effort to express ideas and the constant use of eye, hand and brain is a unique way to reinforce learning Writing is a productive skill, so it is writing that provides students with a chance to put all those language itself and practice communicative skills at the same time Through the act of writing students will realize what they are already good at and what they still need to learn to become a better and more effective writer (also a better learner) By far, the difficult question for teachers to answer is not “why teach writing”, but it is how to create good reasons for writing * What is Pre - Writing ? For most of us, getting started is often the hardest part of writing A blank page, begging to be filled with ink, can be intimidating, especially when our words come slowly or when our minds go blank Pre – writing is considered to be very important in teaching writing Smith (1989) stated that Pre – writing is the complex network of initial mental sequences we undergo when we write a paper In addition, Richmond (1985) pointed out that Pre – writing is the first stage of the writing process and is also called the idea – generating stage which stretches back to include anything that you have ever done or have ever been that might have given you ideas to write about Normally, in pre – lesson stage, only to 10 minutes are used to conduct the activities.However, if teachers, for some reasons, not prepare the materials well enough, they will realize the failure of having pre – lesson activities immediately Moreover, in some large classes with a number of students whose English knowledge are limited, it often takes time to conduct these activities This leads to the confirmation of the teachers’ role in designing appropriate materials in pre – lesson activities In conclusion, students’ writing performance can be affected by teachers’ factors including teaching methods, teachers’ knowledge and teachers’ instructions in pre – lesson stage Teaching methods may play a decisive part in obtaining teaching goals in pre – lesson stage Beside teaching methods, teachers’ knowledge also plays an important part as the former makes the activities interesting in term of the content Additionally, the fact that teachers’ instructions properly may help students be sure that they can understand what they need to in the lesson Thus, with a view to improve the pre – lesson stage in writing lesson, teachers should renovate their teaching methods, in this case that is the way teachers elicit the pre – lesson activities At the same time, teachers should improve their knowledge including both knowledge of language and knowledge of the field expertise Finally, teachers should give clear and brief instructions in this stage so that students can produce good writing pieces 2.2 The reality of the study Basing on the new textbooks designed by the Ministry of Education and Training, English are taught with four skills and Language Focus which focuses on grammar and pronunciation The writing program at Ham Rong high school follow the syllabus of the Ministry of Education and Training with the aim of improving students’ abilities in writing On English 11 textbook, there are a range of types to practice writing with narrative, writing letters, describing statistics from a chart or a table or writing a report or a biography As regards the language, for non - major English students, students sometimes have to depend on the provided structures and phrases or vocabularies However, some of them start to be aware of and perform different styles as well as various levels of formality to match the writing situation But most of their works still need to be examined for vocabulary and style accuracy In terms of methodology, students are expected to master the general study skills Students should be active in self – studying, peer and group cooperation They understand the process in teaching and learning writing and know how to write 2.2.1 Background of the study The action research was carried out with the aim of finding “The effects of pre – writing th activities on grade 11 students’ writing performance at Ham Rong High School” While teaching writing at this school, the author realizes that some English teachers, for some reasons, not usually conduct the pre – writing activities effectively at writing lessons To make it clearly how pre – writingactivities affect to the students’ writing performance, some factors related to students’participation in pre – writing stage will be discussed in this part Three volunteer teachers from other classes were asked to come to classes 11B6 and 11B7 in two different periods to observe the writing lesson without notifying to the teacher and all the students in that class The observers just focused on what the teacher did in pre – writing stage and the reaction of students in the class at this stage What is more, the teachers collected some of students’ writing papers in order to compare the differences in students’ writing performance between the pre – and post improvement stage of this research 2.2.2 Brief description of the lesson * Topic for the writing task : “Writing a formal letter expressing gratitude” * Time allowance: 10 minutes (3 minutes for warm – up and minutes for pre – writing activities) * THE RESULTS OF PRE – IMPROVEMENT CLASS OBSERVATION Class 11B6 Teachers’ activities For warm – up: Teacher pointed at the textbook and asked her students “What is this?” – “OK Today we are going to learn how to write a formal letter of expressing gratitude” For pre – writing stage: Teacher asked her students to Task 1, and then she explained some new words such as donated, gratitude , receipt Students’activities Some of them said “It is a letter” Some said nothing, some kept on personal talks The class was noisy because of the hot weather Most of the students did nothing and only some of them listened Teacher asked students to to what the teacher Task for the while – writing said stage Comments This is a typical lesson of a careless teacher She did not prepare anything for the lesson so students felt bored with her lesson so that their writing performance would be affected 11B7 For warm – up: Teacher showed a letter copied in A4 paper and asked the students “Can you see what you call this? Is this a letter?” For pre – writing stage: Teacher also asked students to task in the textbook and then she answered all the questions by herself if there was no reply from the students Teacher also asked students to task with no emphasis on what they had to to write a letter of expressing gratitude This is a teacher – centered teaching approach The teacher “Yes” did not notice the feelings of the students Teacher even gave a wrong sentence “Can you see what you call this?” at warm – up stage This shows that teacher didn’t Students seemed tired prepare the lesson plan and nervous and tried before teaching that to finish their task writing lesson The above results show that the problem of ineffective pre – writing activities was true in writing lessons in classes of Ham Rong High School The next step is to conduct a survey to find out the causes of the problem from students Conducting a survey to get information from students 104 students were asked to give their answers to the questions and then handed in their papers to the teacher These were the results of the survey: Question 1: What is your self - assessment on your writing performance today? Very bad Bad Fair Good Very Good No % No % No % No % No % 43 43.75 25 25 11 10 21 15 6.25 The data in Table shows that the writing performance of the grade 11 non – major English students at Ham Rong High School was not good The percentage of the students who thought their writing performance on that day were very bad was 43.75% and bad was 25% What is more, 10% of the asked students assessed that they had no idea of their writing performance Meanwhile, the percentage of the students thinking their writing performance were good and very good was 15% and 6.25% respectively Clearly, the findings show us that most of the students feel their writing performance will be monotonous if there is nothing improved Question 2: Does your teacher ask you to join in the pre – writing activities today? All the students (100%) are asked to join in the pre – writing activities on that period This shows that the trend of having pre – writing activities in the writing lesson is very popular in Ham Rong school Question Yes No 100% Does your teacher ask you to join in the pre – writing activities today? 0% Question 3: Do you like those pre – writing activities? If No, please answer the next question Yes No As can be seen from the chart, almost all the students (78.75%) who were asked did not like the activities of the teachers whereas 21.25% of them stated that they liked the pre – activities that the teacher conducted on that day Question : Why aren’t you interested in taking part in the pre – writing activities today? Reasons My vocabulary and grammar structures are so poor I don’t know much about the writing topic No 55 40 % 87.3% 63.5% The topic is not a “hot” one I don’t feel being motivated enough Others (the classroom is not comfortable enough with the dim lights, the picture is so small to see, the fans spin slowly) 32 26 12 50.79% 41.26% 19.04% As can be seen from the table, a large majority of the students (87.3%) stated that their vocabulary and grammar structures were not enough to take part in the pre – writing activities on that day 63.5% of them said that they did not know much about the topic One more reason for the inactiveness of students in that pre – writing activity is that students thought that the topic was not “hot” enough This accounted for 50.79% of the students Motivation and other classroom effects added 41.26% and 19.04% respectively to the list From the information collected, teachers at Ham Rong High School should be aware of some factors affecting to the students’ participation in pre – writing stage so that the y can conduct more effective activities that help students write better Question 5: Multiple choices: a Teacher doesn’t conduct the pre – writing activity effectively b It is hard to hear what the teacher talks in the activity c The topic is not enlightened well enough d The teacher’s instructions are not clear enough (You feel confused with what to do) e Others: Teacher’s bad mood, she doesn’t make up… Question Choice Besides the above reasons, which of the following teachers – related – problems making you feel not motivated enough in today’s pre – writing activity ? Notes a b c d e 58 (92.6% ) 22 (34.9% ) 15 (23.81% ) 42 (67.7% ) 10 (15.87% ) As can be seen from the table, almost all the students agreed that on that day, their teacher conducted a boring pre – writing activity whereas 67.7% of them reckoned that their teacher gave unclear instructions and 34.9% of them thought that it’s hard to hear what the teacher talked in the pre – writing activity This proves that teacher’s carelessness in preparing activities in pre – writing stage is the main reason that causes the students’ inactiveness in the stage In addition, smaller percentage of other teachers – related factor such as the teachers’ mood or appearance or the ineffective topic exploitation are also counted for students’ low motivation in taking part in this stage 2.2.3 Finding cause of the problem * Consulting with colleagues In order to get more professional advice, suggestions and ideas about the problem of finding out “the effects of pre – writing activities to students’ writing performance” and with the aims of making teachers at Ham Rong High School realized the importance of pre – writing activities in teaching writing the author of the research consulted with 10 English teachers who are teaching in the English Division at Ham Rong High School The following questions were chosen for teachers of English in the English Division at Ham Rong High School to answer on piece of paper: Question According to you, how important these activities affect to students’ writing performance? Item No (1) Least important → Most important (5) 1(%) 2(%) 3(%) 4(%) 5(%) a 6.6 26.6 33.3 33.5 b 6.6 13.3 6.8 53.3 20 c 40 20 26.7 13.3 d 16.6 33.3 41.6 2.5 a Warm – up activities b.Pre – writing activities c While – writing activities d After – writing activities Table summarizes the teachers’ ideas about the importance of pre – writing activities on students’ writing performance In general, they thought that pre – writing activities affect most students’ writing performance Coming back to the above analysis, we also can see that warm – up activities ranked the second after pre – writing activities in the teachers’ view toward its relationship with students’ writing performance meanwhile while and after – writing stage were appreciated less important than the above activities Clearly, the findings show that English teachers at Ham Rong High School realized that pre – writing activities are really important to measure their students’ writing performance Question 2.Do you often conduct pre – writing activities in teaching writing? This question was designed with a view to explore whether the teachers of English at Ham Rong High School have the habit of conducting pre – writing activities in writing lessons or not And the result was as follows: As can be seen from the pie chart, a majority (8 teachers = 53.33%) of the teachers said they always conducted pre – writing activities, and 26.66% claimed “often” Meanwhile,13.33% admitted to conducting these “sometimes” only and 6.6 % of all the teachers rarely took pre – writing activities into consideration when teaching writing Luckily, no teachers confessed “never” Question 3.Have you ever met the following problems while conducting pre – writing activities? a.(problem 1) Students make noises and keep on their personal talks b.(problem 2) Students not anything, just keep silent c.(problem d.(problem4).Others………………………………………………………………………… 3).Students not work effectively with the activities you have prepared The answers to this question revealed that all of the teachers have ever met problems when they conduct pre – writing activities in writing lessons Not surprisingl y, 80% (08/10) responded that they saw the students made much noises and kept on their personal talks in pre – writing stage This may be accounted for the psychologi cal matter of the students They are, at that age, often talkative and naughty not only inside the classes 33.33% (3/10) of all the teachers admitted that their students did not anything, just said in the chairs and kept silent out of 10 teachers (which accounted for 40%) also stated that they had prepared some pre – writing activities but their students did not work effectively This should be concluded that may be the students not like the activities of the teachers Besides, 40% (4/10) of all the teachers gave out some more problems in pre –writing stage they had ever met such as students slept, they looked out of the windows or leant the other Question 4.How you solve the problem? If you choose choice d Please answer the next question a Just nothing, let the class be b Shout at the students and punish them c Move to another parts of the lesson d Try to find out the reasons why they are not interested in the lesson and find the appropriate activities for the next lessons 10 Question What is your suggestion toward the ineffective pre – writing activities? 12 teachers who wished to change the situation gave the following suggestions They are rearranged already Teachers should prepare well enough for both English proficiency and suitable activities Teachers should make sure that the students understand what she/he said Teachers should take notice to their students – related problems such as students’ low motivation, their English ability and also the writing topic for them Besides, teachers should also take care of the classroom restraints when conducting the activities Last but not least, the time limitation in this stage is another difficulty therefore teachers should take care of this by choosing the suitable activities for this stage * Reading professional books or journals for ideas and suggestions All the information, ideas or suggestions taken from the professional books or journals were mentioned in details in the chapter one in this Minor Thesis Paper (from page 12 to page 17) 2.2.4 Try – out stage * Designing strategies for improvement From the comments, ideas and suggestions from the students, colleagues, professional books or journals and my own teaching experience the author of this thesis designed the following strategies to improve the problem: Preparing more than ONE suitable activities for pre – writing stage and making the writing topic easier Trying to avoid the unclear instructions and English proficiency problems Making sure that students are motivated to work and be more interested in the writing lessons Trying to avoid the classroom restraints Paying more attention to less – active or quiet students and encouraging them to work Managing time well in each part of the writing lesson 11 * Try o u t s t r a t e g i e s a n d m a k i n g n o t e s o n w h a t h a p p e n e d i n the class The new strategies and changes were tried out in the next practice writing lesson All the changes and improvements or even new or bad problems after each lesson were made notes by the teacher in brief * The first try – out lesson – at class 11B7: Topic: “Describing information in a table” - Pre – writing activities lasted for 10 minutes - Teacher prepared a table drawn in A0 paper, the classroom was comfortable and well – prepared - After the warm – up activities, the teacher presented the words and the language expressions used in describing a table with some symbols of “rise”, “drop”, “slightly”, “Sharply”….All these symbols were drawn on the board Teacher checked the words by showing at the symbols and the students read the words without looking at the letters or the translation of the teacher At the end of the stage, teacher divided the class into big teams and let students play a game in which the longer sentences were emphasized such as “the number of the literate females dropped sharply in 2006”, “it increased slightly”…If any team has more correct sentences, they will be the winners - It might be a successful lesson * The second try – out lesson – at class 11B6: Topic: Topic: “Describing information in a table” - Pre – writing activities lasted in 10 minutes in a comfortable classroom - After the exciting warm up activities of a game “Word category” with the aim of presenting the new words in describing a table, the teacher showed a A0 paper with the number indicating the trends of falling, increasing….The students might be successful in writing this kind of exercise because there were a large number of students repeated these expressions POST – IMPROVEMENT STAGE * Evaluting the try - out - Three volunteer teachers were asked to observe a lesson after the trying – out stage that illustrated the changes that had been made - The results of class observation was used to reflect on the reasons for those changes (which could include things that were improved or that got worse) - A survey was carried out to get information from students - Comments and conclusions were made 2.2.5 Brief description of the lesson * Topic for writing essay: “Write about one of the competitions for secondary school students on TV” * Time allowance: 10 minutes * Classroom observation description 12 Time/ Activity Teachers’ activities Students’activities Warm – up Comments Teacher asked “Yes” This period is somequestions such as - Road to Olympia considered to be “Do you often watch successful After game shows on TV?” - Tuoi Doi Menh being consulted by English teachers at “Can you tell me theMong names of these Ham Rong High competitions for- Nguoi ban gai dang School as well as secondary school studentsmen conducting the on TV?” two try – out lessons, teacher - Rung chuong vang has withdrawn After looking at those some reasons for pictures, students the success of the period - Teacher showed some discovered the name of Pre – writing big pictures of the famous the game show was Pre – activity is interesting activity (10’) game show “Road to “Road to Olympia” at Olympia” and asked the second picture and Visual aids are students to play the game the winner is group effective enough “What is this?” There are in the class The class Students five big pictures, all are is excited with a big cooperate better copied from the applause for the winner because they are acquaintances gameshow on TV If any team can guess the name New words and of the game at the first structures are picture will get the highest taught logically mark The marks will be There is no counted backward problem with students’ - Teacher asked students misunderstandi to answer the six suggestions about the toward ng content of the game show teachers’ instructions in the textbook All the T: “What time is it on students of the class had TV?” the chance to talk about the show before writing it - Students can discuss in groups and choose one competition to write about 13 While – writing - Teacher asked students activity (20’) to make sentences basing on the suggestions in the textbook and practice in pairs S: “Ten o’clock” “What chanel is it on?” “ VTV3” - Teacher asked the students to write about any competitions for secondary school students on TV Most of them chose the show “Road to Olympia” and some chose other show such as “Not Nhac Vui” or “Tuoi Doi Menh Mong” – the singing contest and even one of them chose “Ringing The Golden Bell” – a famous game show for students at university S: How many parts are there in the show? S: four parts S: How many competitors are there? S: four - Ask students to work in pairs for peer correction - Teacher goes around to check whether students can correct their classmates’ writing If students need her help, the teacher will help them to correct the mistakes - Read your passage again, make it perfect and retell it in the next period - Students the peer correction Post – writing activity (12’) 5.Homework (3’) S: How long does it last? S: hours - Students write the passage in a very good mood with the content suggested in the textbook Some of them write short passage However, some write very well – done ones Write notebook on the Bellows are some more comments about the improvement of the students in post – improvement stage: 14 Pre – improvement Changes Post –improvement Low Students’ Higher 30% of the students did not write Most of students were eager to write because they said that the topic motivation after the game because they said that was boring Some of them were they liked the game so much forced to write basing on the suggestions in Task They wrote in a bad form of letter (See Appendix…) Less Ss’ mistakes on both Some students tried to follow the grammar Mistakes on grammar and expressions and suggestions in Task in the has improved a lot There still existed textbook but theirs were full of expressions some but for the whole passage they were acceptable because both the grammar mistakes and words usages (See Appendix…) teacher and her students need more time to perfect these mistakes Notes: This may take longer time to improve the situation but the teacher should pay much attention to this because it is the goal in teaching a productive skill More Less creative Ss’ More creative Some students in the class did creativity Ss’ creativity in writing is another hard when not know what to with their work to attain and Ss will make their writings so they copy the whole producing awriting creative when they are motivated sample letter in the text book n ew enough or they feel much interested in the writing writing topic In the post – ignoring the requirements of the version improvement the students’ writing tasks writing performance has been improved much b(See the appendix…) *Post – improvement questionnaire for students Question 1: What you think of the pre – writing activities today? a Very boring b Boring c So so d Interesting and challenging e Very interesting Question What you think of the pre – writing activities today? Choice a b 0% 0% c 12.5% Notes d 37.5% e 50% As can be seen from Table 50% of the students loved the pre – writing activities on that day and 37.5% of the students said that they liked the activities because they were 15 interesting and challenging However, 12.5% of the students had no ideas of the activities This might be concluded that the try – out stage of conducting pre – writing activities with the attention of some factors relating to the writing performance have certain good effects Question 2: What you think of your writing performance today? a Extremely unsatisfied c Satisfied b Unsatisfied Question What you think of your writing performance today? d Goode Very good Choice a b 0% 0% c Notes d e 18.75% 43.75% 37.5% It appears that students preferred the post – improvement lesson compared with the pre – improvement one The number of students who enjoyed the lesson and felt confident with their writing performance accounted for 43.75% and 37.5% respectively while there was no students stated that their writing performance is very bad or bad (0%) The students’ writing performance improvement should be assessed by the teacher but students’ ideas toward what they have done is an important matter that we teacher should take into consideration Question 3: Which of the changes made by the teacher were successful? a The teacher carried out interesting activities that made the class work well b The teacher provided sufficient and effective new words and sentence structures c The teacher encouraged the less active students to work and give helps when necessary d The teacher gave clear instructions e All of the above changes Question Which of the changes made by the teacher were successful? Choice Notes a b c d e 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% All of the students (100%) agreed that the changes made by the teacher were successful Question 4: a The class is well – equipped b Visual aids are used effectively c Good class atmosphere d Suitable time using for the activities e All of the above factors Question Choice a Besides, the changes from 40% teachers, which of the following factors in pre – writing stage help you write better? b c 31.25% 21.25% 16 Notes d 10% e 87.5% It can not be denied that students needed a lot of changes for the situation That is the reason why they choose the option e with 87.5% of all the students Classroom facilities are really helpful in conducting the lesson Students can not pay attention to the lesson if the fans not work or they can not see the board clearly because of the dim lights Therefore, they appreciated that well – equipped classroom with 40% of the students ma y help to change the situation It seems that students did not take care of how much time the teacher used for the pre – writing activities because there was only 10% of the students thought that this may be the cause of the situation However, teachers should be aware of the time limitation problem, because sometimes they make the class involve in the activities and they forget that they have only to 10 minutes for the pre – writing activities Question 5: What are your own changes after taking part in the pre – writing activities today? Changes Extremely Disagree I Agree Strongly Not disagree don’t agree given know 0% 11.25% 7.5% 46.25% 32.5% 2.5% a I am motivated to work because the teacher gives out many interesting activities 5% 18.75% 8.75% 56.25% 8.75% 2.5% b I can write with the requirement in the textbook because the teacher provides right and useful new words and sentence structures c I am confident enough even though I stand in front of a big crowd d I can work better because I work with my acquaintances 2.5% 0% 16.25% 2.5% 5% 47.5% 27.5% 1.25% 3.75% 68.75% 23.75% 1.25% The students’ self – assessment are clearly presented in Table 11 An overall statement made based on the data in the table is that students’ interest in the activities has increased considerably It can be inferred from the fact that most of the students (92.5%) preferred working in a group with their acquaintances and they could work better This is drawn from the fact that students are happier if they are put in a groups with their close friends because they get on well with each other when sharing ideas about one problem The same percentage(75%) was shared with the students’ improvement in gaining confidences and being motivated to work in pre – writing stage 65% of the students emphasized their improvement in writing abilities after being instructed by the teacher with useful words and sentence structures To sum up, these findings provide us evidence to believe that teachers can change the situation if they spend time investigating how to increase students’ interest to each stage of the lesson Question 6: What were the good points of pre – writing activities which were improved in today’s lesson? a Students will be more interested in learning writing skills if the teacher conducts these kinds of activities regularly b These activities help to build the students’ confidence in writing and overcome the “shock” of language use c Both a and b 17 Question What were the good points of pre– writing activities which were improved in today’s lesson? Choice Note a b c 0% 0% 100% All of the students agreed that the activities in post – improvement stage help them much in gaining confidence when writing and also help them become more and more interested in their writing lessons This chapter is not only the most important but also the most interesting part of this research It provides information on the practical study with situational analysis Given the fact on how teachers and students at NBK High School teach and learn writing classes, the effects of pre – writing activities on the students’ writing performance, the students’ ideas about the way teachers conducted these activities, teacher will realize the importance of pre – writing activities in teaching writing skill and what they should to make the students feel more interested in their writing lessons 18 CONCLUSION 3.1 Conclusion This study is carried out as a contribution to the knowledge of all teachers and students of English in their teaching and learning In previous chapters, the review of literature with theoretical backgrounds of action research, teaching writing, factors affecting the students’ writing performance are put at the beginning, the next are the study with the data analysis and findings of questionnaires in pre – improvement stage, the trying – out and the post – improvement stage The last chapter gives recommendations to the teachers and classroom facilities The author of this research does hope that this study would be of some value to both teachers and students in their language teaching and learning process 3.2 Limitations of the study The study still has some limitations First of all, this study is very small – scale, which focuses on only the effects of pre – writing activities on the students’ writing performance so while – writing activities roles are not mentioned here Secondly, the study basically bases on one source of data, questionnaires, which might be subjective on the side of the informants, so the researcher can not guarantee the reliability of the information collected What is more, the area of the study is only restricted to classroom writing in the textbook published by MOET; thus, any application outside classroom context requires careful thoughts and consideration 3.3 Suggestions for further research There were still some problems that this study could not solve absolutely for during the try – out stage: The student’s poor vocabularies and the insufficiency of grammar knowledge This needs time to realize the improvement However, the teacher should pay much attention to this goal when teaching a productive skill like writing Hopefully that the above problems could be solved in other studies after this research in the near future REFERENCE 19 Byrne, D (1988) Teaching Writing Skills Longman Harmer,J.(2001) The Practice of English Language Teaching (3rd ed) Essex: Longman 3.Leki,I.(1976).Academic Writing, Techniques and Tasks: ST.Martin Press, New York Raimes,A (1993) Teachniques in Teaching Writing UP Smith,W(1989).The Act of Writing Random House, New York Tsui,A.B.(1993) Helping Teachers to Conduct Action Research in their classrooms In D Freeman,with S.Cornwell(Eds) New Ways in Teacher Education Alexandria VA: TESOL Underwood,M.(1987).Effective New York: Longman Ur,P.(1996) A Course Cambridge University Press Class Management: in Language Williams,M.&Burden,R.L.(1997)Psychology Social A Practical Teaching: for Language Constructivist Approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 20 Practice Approach &Theory Teachers: A DANH MỤC CÁC ĐỀ TÀI SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM ĐÃ ĐƯỢC HỘI ĐỒNG ĐÁNH GIÁ XẾP LOẠI CẤP SỞ GD&ĐT VÀ CÁC CẤP CAO HƠN XẾP LOẠI TỪ C TRỞ LÊN Họ tên tác giả : Trương Thị Thanh Hà Chức vụ đơn vị công tác : Trường THPT Hàm Rồng- TP Thanh Hóa TT Tên đề tài SKKN Cấp đánh giá xếp loại ( Phòng, Sở, Tỉnh) Cấp Sở Using While- Reading Techniques to Improve Reading Comprehension for the 11th Form Students at Ham Rong School Kết đánh giá xếp loại ( A, B, C) B Năm học đánh giá xếp loại 2015-2016 ... focuses on grammar and pronunciation The writing program at Ham Rong high school follow the syllabus of the Ministry of Education and Training with the aim of improving students? ?? abilities in writing. .. action research was carried out with the aim of finding ? ?The effects of pre – writing th activities on grade 11 students? ?? writing performance at Ham Rong High School? ?? While teaching writing at. .. writing activities on the grade 11 students? ?? motivation in writing at Ham Rong High School? ?? Based on the results of this action research, some changes and improvements could be applied in the